Community Helpers Unit

Candlelit (led candle)
restaurant with waiter and
customer play scripts. 

Fire engine: made with red tri-fold display
board and a large cardboard box.

Community Helpers hats and coats

Doctor's/Vet's Office: X-rays from
an animal book, vision chart, play script,
telephone, and play medical instruments.

We began the unit with a puppet show for the kids! I made sure to include several community helpers in the script (see below), but no more than two characters were needed at once, so myself and one of the Educational Assistants performed the show together. I also created a slide show with backgrounds that went with each scene and asked students to play different parts of the script. Kids took turns coming up to the board, acting and saying their lines.

Puppet Show Script:

Built-in Literacy Opportunities

Sentence Strips: Students are able to easily manipulate these sentences by moving the words and pictures around. They enjoyed practicing reading using a pointer. The strip chart was conveniently located in play area where kids feel most comfortable.

WH- Questions Flip Chart: I assigned different students to the Read with Teacher area where we practiced answering Who, What, and Where questions. For example: Who fights fires? What vehicle do policemen drive? and Where do  teachers work? etc. 

Word Wall: We tried to include photos of community helpers of different genders and ethnicities (except for the teacher, I used my photo for that one) 

Writing: Students used pretend registration sheets at the doctor's/vet office, they wrote patient names, their symptoms and other information. I modeled writing during circle and made sure to remind students that writing can look like squiggling or random letters, and not everyone is able to write like a "big kid. 

Creating opportunities for social interaction

Mix puzzle pieces from 2-3 puzzles in one container.
Prompt students to say: "here you go" as they hand
 the "wrong" puzzle pieces to their friends.

The majority of students on my caseload have significant delays in social skills. Which means that a big part of the school day is spend on teaching age-appropriate social interaction. Depending on the child's current level of social skills, I use different strategies to help him or her. For example, some students with autism first need to be taught to "notice" their peers. The point of the activities below is to help students understand that they need their peers in order to complete the activity or play the game. Some of these activities include:
- puzzle or matching game
Take all of the puzzle pieces out of the puzzle or game and give it to one of the students.
Give the puzzle pieces or matching game pieces to the other student. The first student is then prompted to ask for the pieces for his puzzle or game in order to completed. Having a written script often helps, for example: "David, can I have the square please?" The second student is required to pay attention and hand the correct piece to his peer.

Plastic egg surprise

- puzzle mix-up
Mix puzzle pieces from 2 different puzzles (ex: shapes puzzle and colors puzzle) in one container. Prompt students to say: "Here you go" or "Here is your piece" as they hand the puzzle pieces from the other puzzle to their friends.
- plastic egg surprise
Hide small toys or stickers in plastic "Easter" eggs and put them into a sack or a box. Have students take turns drawing eggs out of the container and open them to see the surprise hidden inside. Prompt students to show their surprise to their peer: "Look!" (written scripts help). Then prompt the peer to make a comment about the surprise: "Wow!" or "Cool!"
- bingo
One of the students gets to call out the cards (numbers, colors, or letters depending on the type of the bingo game) and the other student get the bingo card. Prompt students to play the game cooperatively.
- dramatic play toys (create sets of toys by setting the toys into two separate containers)

Garage playset with a visual play script

Student can play doctor or vet together. One of the kids could have the box with all of the medical instruments, while the other has the "patients". Restaurant, store, cars, and many other pretend play games can be played in this manner. It is helpful to have play scripts available for these activities. Many of my high-functioning students with autism are more inclined to play pretend games with peers when they have visual step-by-step directions available to them.
-Bear Buddies
Research shows that children are more likely to interact and play cooperatively when they play in close proximity to one another. In order to encourage more cooperative play in my classroom, I created an activity called Bear Buddies. I made many pairs of necklaces shaped like bears (laminated construction paper and yarn) in different colors. Students who are assigned the same color are required to: stay together, play together, and talk together. Depending on the number of students in the class, I sometimes assign a particular activity or play area to individual pairs of students. For example, Johnny and Rosie have to play in the kitchen, while Sammy and Becky have to complete a puzzle together.

For more ideas please refer to Tasks Galore Let's Play!

Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay

It's progress report time again! How do you take data?

Sometimes it seems that there are nearly as many ways to take data as there are teachers. I have settled on a system that works for me. Each area of my classroom has data collection sheets on clipboards with my students' goals and objectives listed on them. I like to organize the goals by activity, so if a student has social/emotional goals like conflict resolution skills, data is most likely to be collected during leisure/recess time, not during daily living activities (there are always exceptions to the rule however). This system allows me to take data on any student during a particular activity.
When a student completes the task exactly as it is written in the objective, we mark it with a plus, if not then with a minus. My EAs understand that when the objective requires students to complete the task independently, it means that he or she must perform the task without any prompts (initial cues don't count as prompts). When prompts are used, we record it by writing a G for gestural prompt, V for verbal prompt, P for partial physical, and F for full physical prompt. This detailed data helps me assess student progress and adjust the program.

Some teachers create individual data sheets for each student and take data on 2-3 individual students per day. I find that my system works for me because there are less papers to keep track of and manage and none of the students get "forgotten". What works for you?

Whole Body Listening stategies

Last year my district sent me and other Early Childhood Education teachers to the Social Thinking Conference. It was a great experience, I learned a lot and acquired some goodies! One of them was this Whole Body Listening poster. It is posted in my classroom and I often refer to it in order to remind students of behavior expectation at circle.
We go over all of the "body parts" during the first weeks of school and talk about what it looks like to have "looking eyes" or "thinking brain". Since many of my students struggle with receptive communication skills, I try to use as many visuals as possible. We look at photos of people and talk about their body position, their gaze, etc. We also play a game where I look at something or someone and ask the kids to tell me who or what I am "thinking" about.

At the end of circle time, I ask one of my Educational Assistants to tell me who they think demonstrated best whole body listening skills. As a reward the child gets to pick out a song, or depending on the month, yoga poses, or animal moves which we do as a group.I got this idea from one of the Tasks Galore books.

Song menu

Morning greeting activities

How do you start your circle time routine?
I have used "get-to-know-me" songs like: "My name is Ms. Dina, Ms. Dina, Ms. Dina, my name is Ms. Dina, and who are you?"
Last year, students had laminated cards with their photos (with Velcro on the back) on their seats when they came to circle and when they saw their name displayed, they would come up and stick their name under it.
During the snowman unit, I had each student draw a part of the snowman as I called their names.
This year, I have been using Questions of the Day as a greeting activity. Kids "vote" for the answer using their name cards.

Writing Centers

Each session of preschool (AM and PM) in my district are two and a half hours long, which makes it difficult for literacy instruction to take place on daily basis. However, during one of the district literacy training sessions with Vicki Rothstein this year a Four Blocks Approach to literacy was discussed and, despite having heard of it in the past, I was suddenly inspired to create literacy centers in my classroom incorporating all of the "blocks".

My centers include: Reading to self or Quiet Reading, Writing Center, Read with Teacher (I often use adapted book or activities with students at this center), and Phonemic Awareness activities including beginning sounds games, rhyming, syllable counting practice, etc. (on the rug). I taught my students to check which center they are assigned to by looking at this visual board:

Student names are written on clothing pins and their photos are attached with Velcro. AM session student names are on one side of the pin and PM session names are on the other.

Writing Center has a miniature word wall, unit related writing prompts or ideas, step-by-step directions (some of my students absolutely adore these!), and a little drawer box with labeled writing supplies.

I got the idea of organizing the centers visually from Developing Literacy in Preschool (Tools for Teaching Literacy) by Lesley Mandel Morrow. 

Have you found good strategies to teach literacy to ECE students? Please share!

My new blog

Hello everyone,

I am an Early Childhood Special Education teacher at a preschool in Issaquah, Washington. I have been teaching for two years now and I love my job! My mentor recently suggested that I start blogging in order to share and exchange ideas about teaching young children with special needs. I am looking forward to connecting with other professionals in my field! :-)